Inspiration in Aisle Three

When you are on a healing journey, you begin to realize that everything that touches a nerve or your senses is divinely orchestrated to assist you on your path.

I'll share an example of this realization that happened to me the other day while in a shopping aisle at a well know retail store. I was picking out a gift bag for the my son's friend's birthday gifts when I overheard a woman talking to her young children in the aisle behind me. They were in my favorite aisle of the entire store, the one with all the art supplies.

A quick background on me that is relevant to this story:

I have considered myself being an Artist for as long as I could hold a crayon.

I had parents who fostered my love and need to make art, dance and play music.

I graduated college with a double Art major in Studio and Commercial Art.

I have never stopped creating art,

and as of January 2025, I operate my own art studio (inside an old shopping mall) where I have been teaching art classes to friends, family and my community since March.

Now, back to the shopping aisle:

The woman and child in the art supply aisle were at the store for the same reason I was there, we were both buying birthday presents for other children.

There was no overhead music, no other people around, so I couldn't help but hear the mom clearly ask her small child,

'How about you pick out an art project you think [so & so] would like?'

Well, that question was music to my artist hears.

Maybe two seconds later, I heard the child enthusiastically reply, 'This one!'

The mom quickly said with authority,

'That looks messy. I don't think their mom would like that.'

Silently judging her (because that was not the reply I was hoping to hear), I thought to myself

'You're in the wrong aisle if you don't want messy, Momma, and you did ask your little one to pick out something that the child would like, not something their mother would approve of...

Art is messy, but so is life!'

As a mom, I get it (I've raised three children of my own).

When you are a parent of young children, you are tired all the time, and it seems you are always cleaning up messes. That is part of the gig of helping tiny humans to grow.

This mother was being sympathetic and more compassionate to the mother than the birthday child. There is no shame in that because that is what she was living herself.

One more relevant side note to mention for the child dynamic:

My youngest child (my mini me) is a highly sensitive person and is an uber talented little artist himself. For ten amazing, insightful years, my little boy has been my husband's and my teacher, advocating the importance of really needing to read between the lines of his behaviors and words to help him maneuver through everyday life. Raising this gift of a child has made me hyper-aware of the power of words and subtle nuances that people exchange with one another, and how it effects sensitive humans in real-time.

This mother in the art aisle asked her child to do a task, and the child did exactly that.

Then the mother labeled what her child chose as 'messy' and then added that the friend's mother would dislike the messiness. My concern from one aisle over was, what did that reactive sentence really say to her own impressionable child?

This made me both wonder and cringe knowing what I know.

Let me explain...

As a person who hears all day, everyday, from people passing by my art studio

telling me that they 'can't draw a straight line,'

I know that somewhere in their formative years,

someone created a blockage in their brain that hard-wired them into thinking

that they could not draw, so they just gave up on even trying.

As an artist, it genuinely makes me sad to think of all the goodness that people with art blockages have missed out on. Creating art gives people focus, problem-solving skills, patience for the process, the ability to make something where there was nothing (a blank canvas or a lump of clay). I haven't even touched on all that creating art can do for for our mental, emotional, and spiritual selves.

Making art and using our hands to create something or to help ourselves is primal... it is how we learn to exist in the world that we find ourselves in as soon as we discover we have hands and fingers as infants.

Let me circle back to my 'Art is Messy, but so is life' statement:

Children (and adults alike) need the freedom to make a mess as they learn to create anything in life. Allowing 'messy' time to find order from chaos is a fundamental and essential part of growth.  A blank canvas is just the very tip of potential and is the calm before the flood of inspiration flows into action. The act of making art can be 'messy' and even look like a complete mess at first, but it needs time, space, materials, and motivation to completely transform into whatever it will become.

Given room to grow, a mess can become a masterpiece.

People who have lived a long enough life of trials and errors know that learning a skill takes time for what ever it is they are birthing from nothing into something. Art and life can be a messy process, but if given love, time, space, and supportive encouragement, the messy part is just phase one of the journey towards mastery.

So please, let your children (and your inner child) get messy and make some art.

They (you) might just have fun learning something new and might just discover hidden answers to important life questions in the process.